Friday, May 16, 2008

The First Hour (Prologue & Chapter One of My Novel, Killing Lilith)

This is the most recent version, completed in Baltimore on January 30, 2012:

3:17pm

this is the day the universe opens up to me... the day that i throw off the chains of gravity and bound around my old home. earth. california. october 12, 2006. i remember my first, but i will never forget my last. slowhand will kill me while i come, & i will go to god.

3:18pm

First hour’s the longest. Waiting.
Forty-five minutes in the parking lot of El Pollo Loco staring at the opposing arrows
flashing on the dash of my Infiniti. Onoffonoffonoff.Not too late, I whisper to myself; if I turn
around now I can go home, start dinner, pretend nothing happened—would ever happen. I look at the
dashboard again; the blinking blurs. Nothing. Fear. Been waiting too long—most of my damned existence. No
more. Desire is finally stronger than fear. I turn off the hazards, twist the
key in the ignition, and start driving towards Sacramento.

Guilt. It should be
weighing me down, keeping me from achieving escape velocity, but I don’t feel
much of it. Two children and a husband left behind, left to fend for
themselves. I can imagine the confusion when they come home hungry and
expecting. Haven’t I been blaming myself long enough?

Maybe they deserve
better. Not really. If they did, I would have provided it. I did provide it for
the past twenty years without much complaint and gradually diminishing
expectations that any of them would ever truly appreciate it. I’ve bottomed
out.

I know what people
will think, too—another cruel and insensitive bitch abandoning her
litter. I can already hear the cries: But those are your children. They
didn’t ask to be brought into this world. YOU are accountable for how they act.

Bullshit! In the end,
we all have to be accountable for ourselves. They’ve had everything they ever
needed and most of the things they wanted.

I know I’m not free
of all responsibility, but I was barely the moisture in the clay that formed
them. The earth itself is the problem. It comes from this society we’re trapped
in. Gray. Fetid. Epidemic. If I’m corrupt, it’s because the earth has stained
me as well. I too am its waste.

Sure, parents should be the hands that mold the clay,
but we’re much too busy working hard to maintain this contrived sanity we build
around ourselves for even that job. We’ve long since passed on the
responsibility to their teachers. Of course, they don’t want it either.

At least we have the Oprahs and Dr. Phils of the world to solve our problems
in an hour minus commercials, right?

We start the kids off
on Sesame Street
and Barney
while we get some dishes done, and before we realize it, Emily’s skipping
breakfast and having nothing but a Diet Coke for lunch so that she can try to
maintain her Olsen Twin figure. Is it still Barney? I suppose today our kids’ first
fix is Yo Gabba Gabba!

Jacob got his first
tattoo last spring at that music festival in Indio—Coachella. He hadn’t even turned
sixteen yet. My father, The Cantor, would have waved Leviticus at him—railed on for hours about how
scarring the flesh prevents one from being buried in sacred ground.But coffee-stirrer figures and
indelible skin art are the least of my children’s problems.

Emily wanted to hang
out with the “cool” girls at Brentwood during her freshman year. She started
smoking pot with them. By the end of sophomore year, she was snorting Ritalin. Bumping
Rit, she would
tell her friends thinking the lingo would fool me, not realizing I had sources.
Not even halfway through her junior year and she was bumping Ya, cocaine.

My useless excuse for
a husband Jack and I did what we could, put her in a twenty-eight day program
over Winter Break and cut off the generous allowance that had financed her drug
use. Little good it all did.

She became so
fascinated by the kids in recovery addicted to heroin that she had to try it
for herself. We convinced the counselors to let her come home for Christmas.
They sent her with a sponsor, someone to keep an eye on her—some skinny little thing named
Sara.

We found both of them
passed out on Emily’s bathroom floor, the needle still poking out of Emily’s
arm like an enormous wasp stinger—line of blood tracing her elbow.
Poor Sara. She’d been clean for nearly a year. Her parents ended up emptying
her college fund to send her to a residential recovery community in Florida.
The average stay is three years.

When we wouldn’t give
Emily money, she started dragging Jacob with her with the promise that he could
hook-up with
some of her friends so she could mooch from his funds.

When we caught on to
that and cut him off too, my infinitely innovative children came up with new
plans. Last spring, they used the gas card, the only one we still let them keep
because it would only work at BP stations. They maxed it out buying cartons & cartons
of cigarettes at station stores on their way to Coachella. They were able to
make enough selling cigarettes at the show that they could spend the whole
weekend fucked up on mushrooms & crystal meth with enough cash left over
for Jacob to get his tattoo and for Emily to get her tongue pierced.

I gave up after that
fiasco, after getting the bill for their experiment in Capitalism. I realized
that we’d gotten to the point that they didn’t care what we thought of them—what any body thought. Not that
anyone else cared. Brentwood still takes our money.

“They’ll grow out of
it,” Jack had said. “Remember all the shit we did when we followed The Dead?”
They were just typical children testing their boundaries. Let them test their
boundaries. I’m breaking mine. If they’ve stopped caring, why shouldn’t I?

As I head onto the
freeway, (I’ve already been on & off twice, doubting myself because we are
taught to doubt ourselves from childhood) I can’t help but wonder about
everything I’ll miss. Emily’s prom this year, Jacob’s the next. Graduations.
Weddings. Grandchildren. Stints in and out of rehab. Abuse. Divorces. Bitter
loathing. The ever-penetrating hatred that spreads across you like a California
wildfire until it consumes you and there is nothing left but scorn and ash.

Maybe they can grow
from my death, avoid my mistakes. Regardless, the years they’ll spend in
therapy, if they’re smart enough to turn to therapy, won’t hurt.

Will they even miss
me? Think I didn’t love them because I abandoned them? Blame themselves? Screw
them!

Children think all
life revolves around them. That’s their greatest fault—what separates them from the
barely sane adults. Like early Christians, they imagine themselves the
preeminent Earth, the absolute center of their universe. Everything else is
supposed to revolve around them. Nothing’s personal, nothing’s private, and
parents can’t have any aspect of their lives that doesn’t encompass theirs.

Well damn it, this is
mine, and if they can’t accept that… accept my decision… Well, I suppose they
need the sudden reality of losing their mother to blow them sober. I am
Copernicus, Galileo, & Newton at once, the new perspective. Evolution. I am
gravity, force & friction.

Let them decide.

Jesus Christ! Can’t
stop sobbing. Can’t even get a grasp of all the shit that’s ricocheting around
my head right now. The over-intellectualized byproduct of a liberal arts
Berkeley education mixed with years of guilt, angst and self-loathing. Twenty
years wasted climbing the social ladder with Jack before plummeting off the
top. The twenty years before that spent living under The Cantor’s shadow.Is that who I am? Or am I something else? The demon that has
reemerged with SlowHand’s guidance? Lilith come forth one last time to face God and demand a
reckoning!

Jack. What about
Jack? My dear-in-the-headlights husband. A part of me believes he loved me once. The rest
of me knows that I was just a chance at another notch on his belt at Berkeley
when he first saw me walking across the campus. I don’t have many questions
left regarding Jack. I know he won’t miss me. I’ve become a burden to him of
late. He’ll mourn, but he’ll eventually appreciate being unencumbered by my
absence.

Will he blame
himself? Probably not. Jack’s too self-involved—too self-righteous to accept blame
for anything. If anything, he’ll blame me for ruining his life.

He may wonder, for a
moment, if he could have done anything to prevent this? No, Jack. Postpone.
Maybe. I hope he’s ready for the new reality. But if the prick can’t take care
of himself by now, he deserves a life more painful than the death I have
planned for myself.

We
met in an auditorium at Berkeley. Ginsberg was howling, one of the last times
too—rest
his soul. As I walked in, I was distracted by Jack’s eyes. I could feel them on
me, scalpels dissecting and analyzing. I wouldn’t say I was flattered, but I
was definitely intrigued. The sharpness of his eyes matched his face: ragged
cheekbones, jutting jawline, a crooked rook of a nose. They all looked like
they could cut glass, snip tin, pierce hearts.

"What’s the
matter? Don’t like Ginsberg?" I asked as I took the empty seat next to
him. He avoided my gaze when he realized I had noticed he had been ogling me. I
could see the sweat breaking through his skin, the thought that I had caught
him lost in my tits setting his face aflame. He was coy. I wasn’t.

"Well…" And
that’s Jack! All hesitation and uncertainty. He plays it off as wisdom,
claiming that he likes to mull things over, think about how best to answer any
question. Bullshit! It takes him that long just to understand there was a
question. But he’s charismatic and it comes across as charming, at first. He
hides his narcissistic ignorance well. Better yet, he uses it to his advantage.

He was Pre-Law back
then. I was an English major, minoring in Religious Studies, with the same
aspirations to write that bestseller most English majors share. It took an
effort to find some common ground.

"God?" I
asked the next evening over coffee.

"Sorry?"

"Do you believe
in God?" I clarified. I often found the topic a useful barometer of where
a relationship might go.

"Well, no. I
can’t say that I do. I think God is a product of the past. I like to think we
live in a more enlightened time. We don’t need gods to explain our mysteries;
we need Louis Pasteurs and Immanuel Kants. How about you?" He didn’t seem
certain. Any relationship with him would prove precarious at best, I thought.

"I don’t know
God. Who does, really? There’s only one way to be sure, and I’m not ready for
that, yet." I was certain that nothing was certain.

We started dating,
enjoyed what little common ground we were able to find or create. The one thing
we truly shared was a sense that artists and their art, always under attack by
those who understood them the least, needed to be protected in order for
society to thrive. We figured that we had enough brains between the two of us
to do something
about it.

We got married after
he passed the Bar. I taught English to middle-schoolers while he tried to
establish himself in the field. After a year of marriage, I got pregnant and he
got a job offer in Los Angeles doing what he was destined to do: Lawyer to
the Stars. What a
shame he got lost in the glare—been blind ever since.

It didn’t take long
to forget that sense of idealism we had shared. I can’t even imagine why we’ve
stayed married this long. I suppose we used the children as an excuse for that,
too. No, not really. We were both just a bit too comfortable. I was well kept.
The house was well kept. We both wanted something different but were too afraid
of change.

The dynamic was
altered when I caught him having his little virtual affair. Now we’re still married
because there are things I know about him that would humiliate him if they
became public, things that would send his clients running like hypocritical
cockroaches. Fear no more Jack. I’m leaving and I’m taking your dirty little
secret with me.

We did thrive for a
while, though, enjoying the first child, the first house, the first decorator,
the second car, the second child, Jack making partner. Mutual Funds & IRAs.
A second house in Aspen. Living Wills & Trust Funds. Corporations &
Foundations.

We were worth more
than many of his clients until the dot-com bubble burst in ‘01. But we managed
to survive that. You never run out of celebrities fucking up.

Of course, things
have changed since the real estate market crashed. Lots of our money was in
derivatives, basically bad loans. Too much. Lately we’ve been getting more
bills than checks. Most of our Beverly Hills friends have recovered just fine,
but Jack’s afraid of the market, now—too shy to let our money make more
money.

Our lovely little
chalet in Aspen has been on the market for three years, now. Nobody’s buying. I
wouldn’t be surprised if it was foreclosed on by next spring. At least we had
it all for a while. Life seemed perfect.

Life, by most
accounts, should’ve been perfect. Life should be perfect, shouldn’t it? I never
did write that bestseller. The ideas filtered out as fast as the children and
money filtered in. It looked like my fate lay in more domestic domains. Martha
Stewart became my God, and I worshiped her willingly.

Now, if I were to turn around, I would go home
to three days worth of dishes piled in the sink, mold feeding on the grout in
my bathroom, and my compost bin infested with rats. Not a good thing. Martha would be
very disappointed.

Unlike Ms. Stewart
though, I won’t see the inside of a jail cell. SlowHand however… He deserves better—better than being relegated to
acting as my handpicked executioner followed by the rest of his life under
incarceration, a fate I doubt he can escape.

Fear again. Doubt
again. If I hurry, I might get back and have dinner ready before Jack gets
home. Maybe I can just blame it on hormones, get a couple of family meal deals
from Carl’s Jr., and tell Jack I was just out running errands, doing some early
Christmas shopping, finding a new therapist. He thinks I need a new therapist.
That would make him happy… happier.

Dayenu. Enough.
There’s not going to be a third time. I’m done turning around. I drive. As the
last Los Angelic palm disappears from my rearview, I know I am never coming
back.

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About The Word Pimp

Fernando Quijano III is the former President of the Baltimore Chapter of the Maryland Writer’s Association & author of From the Bottom Up, an op-ed column featured on theurbantwist.com. His work has been featured in Welter, Smile Hon, You’re in Baltimore, Baltimore Fishbowl & the poetry anthology, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire. An excerpt from his unpublished novel,Killing Lilith was included in the Apprentice House anthology Freshly Squeezed. He has been featured at the Baltimore Book Festival, as well as on Essential Sundays, Last Rites, StoopStorytelling & The Signal on WYPR. In his spare time, he volunteers to lead free writing workshops for Baltimore’s underserved communities. Fernando was awarded a B grant for his writing by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund in 2011. Check out Fernando's blog: The Word Pimp Spits Wisdom Like Seeds. You can "friend" Fernando on FaceBook:
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